


never hang out with the bad kids

by angelheadedhipster



Category: The Skulls (2000)
Genre: (lol), Cycles 3.1, Future Fic, M/M, and sex, beach, but also punching, its mostly just a sad somewhat sweet story about recovering from trauma, not QUITE at the same time, sex with punching, sure!, this barely has anything to do with canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-02
Updated: 2019-12-02
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:21:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21642112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelheadedhipster/pseuds/angelheadedhipster
Summary: The problem is that McNamara is still always around.
Relationships: Caleb Mandrake/Luke McNamara
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9





	never hang out with the bad kids

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nitpickyabouttrains](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nitpickyabouttrains/gifts).



> I watched this movie once, and decided that there is no way i’m putting more energy and effort into this fic than the screenwriters put into the original movie. Thus there may be some inaccuracies.   
> Also, this did NOT turn out how i thought it would. The tone kind of shifted on me and I couldn’t rein it back in. I’m sorry. Here is this thing. 
> 
> Title from “Love You So Bad” by Ezra Furman, which i have been very into as of late and also fits this fic

The problem is that McNamara is still always  _ around _ . It’s been a week since the island, since Litten died, and Caleb’s fine, mostly. He’s been at the gym a lot. He attended one class, that he can remember, maybe two. He has the same friends he always had - those kinds of friends don’t stop hanging around the beautiful rich boy just because he shoots his father in the head and decimates the secret society that gave him everything he has. His usual hookups are still around, too. He hasn’t contacted those friends or hooked up with anyone, but they’re there. Everything is fine, it’s mostly fine, it’s completely fine, except that McNamara is everywhere. 

Caleb sees him speed-walking across the quad, his cardigan flapping out behind him, hair ruffing in the breeze. McNamara is still working in the dining hall, spooning out sloppy joe’s and green beans, his eyes unfocused and distracted. They actually run into each other once - almost physically run into each other, McNamara going up the stairs as Caleb is coming down. Their shoulders brush and Caleb finds himself off balance, his toe sliding off the step. Their faces are closer than they should be, he thinks, and McNamara’s eyes are narrowed, his lips pursed. Neither of them say anything, and Caleb walks onward, his shoulders tense, replaying the encounter more than he should. 

He talks himself through it on the way to the garage. Should he have said something? What kind of reception is appropriate for your rival-turned-soulmate-turned-person who saved your life after you shot your father and tried to kill yourself? Maybe “frosty and tense” is about right. McNamara’s eyebrows were so prominent. 

  
  


It’s a Friday night, Caleb thinks, though the days are blurring together a bit. He’d been in the city all day, working through wills and estates and shit like that. Caleb’s never been good at math, so he just signs what they tell him to. The lawyers all look at him sideways, the whites of their eyes showing. It makes him feel itchy, restless, so he’s at the boxing gym, sparring with himself, alternating between jumping rope until his legs are burning and throwing endless uppercuts at the air. He’s the only one there. It feels normal, the hallways dark and echoing around him, until he hears footsteps, steady and quick, approaching him.

Caleb doesn’t look up, focuses on keeping his hands steady, his shoulders down, until he hears his name. 

“Mandrake,” says the voice, and Caleb knows its McNamara without turning around. 

“What do you want?” Caleb asks, keeps his feet moving through the attack. 

“To talk, obviously,” says McNamara. He’s only a foot away now, standing with his arms folded in the shadows.

Caleb dances over to him, feels the pressure in the balls of his feet, the way his muscles feel coiled and ready to fight. He’s angry and he doesn’t bother to try to rein it in. “I don’t want to fucking talk to you,” he says, puts the mocking tone in his voice he knows always works. 

McNamara uncrosses his arms, his fingers moving at his sides. Caleb can’t look at his eyes, focuses on the length of those fingers, the careful, trim nails. “I don’t care what you want, Mandrake,” McNamara says. 

“No?” Caleb says. He lowers his arms too, spreads them a bit, almost inviting. “Aren’t we supposed to be soulmates?”

McNamara sneers, takes a half a step closer, and Caleb has been a little out of it lately, yeah, but even so he can feel what’s going to happen before it does. He watches the muscles in McNamara’s shoulder shift under his cardigan like it’s slow motion. He knows he should dodge but he waits half a beat too long, and McNamara’s fist grazes his hip. 

Caleb laughs; that’s been happening lately, laughs that come out of nowhere. He feints, still laughing, and hits McNamara’s face with a left hook, a slow sloppy one that connects. Caleb smells blood as it seeps onto McNamara’s cheek. 

“This is what I do, you idiot,” Caleb says as he backs away, hands again up and ready. “I’m a boxer, look where you fucking are!” 

McNamara’s eyebrows are halfway down his face, he looks  _ angry,  _ and he lurches towards Caleb, big and heavy. Caleb dodges and jabs him in the kidney, but he doesn’t hit that hard and McNamara slams into him and grabs him around the stomach. It’s not boxing - its not anything. Caleb wriggles his hands out of his gloves, tossing them on the ground, tries to use his fingers to grab and prod. McNamara is strong, and he won’t be moved, even though he’s not really doing anything, not attacking. Caleb is too close to get any leverage, so he just tries to twist his body, tries to loosen McNamara’s hold. 

They’re pressed up against each other, pressure points on tender flesh. McNamara’s hips are grinding against Caleb’s thighs, warm against him. They’re not fighting so much as grinding into each other, and Caleb feels a hot coil of rage in his stomach. McNamara is breathing in his ear, loud, wet and so present it feels solid against him.

Caleb shoves with his shoulder and McNamara pushes back, but they move a step. Caleb’s muscles are straining, skin hot and prickling. He tries to slide his torso to the left, which brings his left thigh against McNamara’s crotch.

McNamara’s hard. Caleb can feel it, and it’s difficult to tell through the stupid Banana Republic slacks but he’s pretty sure McNamara’s hard and  _ packing.  _ The heat in Caleb’s stomach picks up a notch, swirling and shifting. He feels like he can’t see straight anymore, can’t make out McNamara’s face in the dark, can’t remember what they were arguing about or why they are fighting. Everything feels blurry and dark and it’s felt like that for days. 

Caleb shifts his weight, tilts his head and kisses McNamara on those stupid plump lips. There’s blood on McNamara’s face, Caleb can taste it. They’re pressed so tight together. He thinks he feels McNamara’s dick jump in his pants, and Caleb’s mouth waters. 

McNamara’s kissing back, Caleb realizes. McNamara’s arms are still around him, and Caleb’s pinned where he is, his mouth open as McNamara fucks his tongue in. There’s still blood, he thinks, but he’s not sure. Caleb is grinding his own dick against McNamara’s thigh, unconscious and hard and desperate. McNamara finally lets go of his grasp on Caleb’s torso to plunge a hand down Caleb’s waistband. Caleb’s shorts are too tight, he thinks the waistband might be ripping, but he doesn’t care. He’ll buy new ones. McNamara’s fingers are as strong as they looked, rough and calloused like the townie he is, and it’s driving Caleb out of his mind. 

Caleb fumbles at McNamara but the other man bats his hand away, backs up a step. Caleb is left panting, feeling sweat cool on his skin as McNamara unzips his own fly, pushes his pants down. He  _ is _ packing, and Caleb wants that in his mouth, wants that against the back of his throat. Before he can do anything about it, though, McNamara has grabbed both their cocks, hand rough and dry. They’re kissing again, teeth clacking as they miss, losing track as they thrust against each other. 

Caleb doesn’t want to come first, but he’s restless and keyed up, has been for ages, for days, and he bites McNamara’s lip as he goes over the edge. McNamara is nearly silent as he comes, mouth open, eyelashes fanning onto his cheeks as he looks down at himself. 

There’s a moment of calm, a few seconds when they both breathe, hands still gripping each other. It barely lasts before McNamara is pulling away, zipping up his fly and staring at his dripping hand. His eyes are still wide but he manages to curl his lips into a sneer as he backs away, turning around and moving so quickly out of the gym Caleb would have called it a run. 

It’s silent again in the gym, nothing but shadows and the sound of Caleb trying to catch his breath.

  
  


Caleb’s been hooking up with inappropriate men for years. For all the times Litten caught him, there were tons of times he got away with it. Townies Caleb met at gas stations, boys in the locker rooms of his fancy private school, older men who were friends of his father. The pool boy, and the other pool boy. This thing, this thing with McNamara, it shouldn’t feel so electric, so special, so  _ new _ . 

They keep finding each other, somehow. Caleb never consciously looks for him, or at least that’s what he tells himself. He doesn’t have McNamara’s phone number, McNamara doesn’t have his. And yet it’s three in the morning and he’s in McNamara’s room, pressing his hands into McNamara’s hipbones to keep him shoved up against the door, running his tongue wetly over the ridges on McNamara’s cock. Or it’s ten minutes before Caleb’s econ midterm and they’re in an empty classroom, and McNamara bites down on Caleb’s nipples as he twists his wrist and Caleb comes with a gasp. McNamara laughs, a snicker that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. 

“How’s that for marginal utility?” McNamara asks, that supid crooked smile creeping up his face. 

“What?” pants Caleb.

  
  


They don’t tell anyone, they don’t acknowledge each other in public. Caleb has done this kind of thing before, too many times, but he’s not sure if McNamara had ever had sex with a man until now. He doesn’t ask, obviously, and McNamara sure as hell isn’t offering any information.

Sometimes he doesn’t see McNamara for days on end. He won’t be on campus, his car isn’t parked outside of the door or in the private garage that no one else seems to have discovered yet. Caleb doesn’t know where he goes on those days, and he doesn’t care. When McNamara is back he has bags under his eyes, and seems so proud of himself that Caleb wants to punch him. Sometimes he does. 

McNamara starts to show up in his dreams. Caleb’s dreams, when he actually sleeps, have been weird for awhile. Since the island, and the weeks before. Most often, he dreams of the WAR room, huge letters that close in on him or that recede into the distance as he tries to run towards them. He dreams of being locked in a cage, of dark water on the periphery of his visions, whispers. “We live by the rules, we die by the rules.” He dreams of his father’s face, of a series of naked male bodies, of driving a fast car down an endless highway. He sometimes dreams of a gun in his hand, of Litten shouting at him, but he wakes up before those dreams get any further, before McNamara stops him. He doesn’t go back to sleep after most dreams, but especially not after those. 

Lately Caleb dreams about taking McNamara’s dick, and wakes up hard and flushed, feeling sore and empty. 

They haven’t done that, yet, and Caleb doesn’t bring it up. They show up at each other’s doors at all hours, seething and crackling, hands and mouths, and then they disappear again. 

It’s been six weeks of this when Caleb has to spend the day at the police station. Apparently the investigation of his father’s death is “wrapping up,” which means all the necessary people have been paid off, but they still have to interview Caleb. He spends the day telling his story, over and over, as coached by his lawyer. Every time he tells it he sees the gun fire, hears the shot, feels the muzzle at his temple. 

They finally let him out and he drives straight to McNamara’s dorm from the police station, pulls the Porsche onto the grass by the front door. Caleb leaves the door wide open, and tosses the key to the first scrawny freshman he sees gaping at him. “Keep it,” Caleb snaps, and takes the stairs to Luke’s floor two at a time. 

“Fuck me,” Caleb says, out of breath, his chest heaving, when McNamara opens the door. “Right now.”

McNamara’s eyes are wide as he steps back to let Caleb in. “What?” 

“You heard me,” Caleb says, stripping his shirt off as he walks himself to the now familiar back of the suite, to the bed against the wall. He doesn’t have to look behind him to know McNamara’s watching, to know his eyes are following the line of Caleb’s shoulders, the muscles over his spine, the swell of his ass. 

“I don’t- I don’t know how...how to do this,” McNamara says, even as he’s coming closer, hands fumbling at his belt and stripping his pants off. 

“I”ll do all the hard work for you,” Caleb says. He’s naked now, fumbling in the nightstand. 

“Caleb, do you…”

“Do I look like I came here to fucking talk?” Caleb snaps. He grabs for McNamara’s wrist, draws McNamara’s hand towards his hip. 

McNamara moves towards him,  _ finally _ , but his mouth opens and he looks like he’s going to say something else. 

“If you want someone to talk to you, talk to your girl,” Caleb says, low and dangerous. They never talk about the girl. It’s a cruel shot, and Caleb knows it, but he’s desperate, and he’s angry and he needs this  _ now _ . 

McNamara shuts his mouth with an audible swallow, and he doesn’t say anything after that. Not when he pushes into Caleb, agonizingly slow, not when he fucks him, hard and fast and merciless, not when tears start leaking out of Caleb’s eyes as the pleasure and the need crest and wash over him. Luke doesn’t make a sound at all, except one barely audible “fuck” when he finally comes that rings, deafening, in Caleb’s ears. 

Fuck.  _ Fuck _ .

  
  


Caleb doesn’t mean to stay the night, but he’s suddenly exhausted and he can’t imagine lifting his limbs enough to get out of McNamara’s bed, let alone back to his building.

He wakes up with Luke’s arm around his waist, those long, strong fingers laying over his ribs. When Caleb walks downstairs, the car is still there, key in the ignition. 

  
  


Things start to feel different after that. Luke smiles, sometimes, and Caleb thinks he does, too, though it feels strange on his face. Luke’s away more, and he seems distracted when he is on campus. Caleb’s sees piles of documents and video tapes, notes scrawled in endless notebooks, whenever he’s at Luke’s. He’s at Luke’s more. There are strange phone calls in the middle of the night that wake Caleb up. Waking up is ok, though, because it means that Caleb had actually been asleep. And some nights he doesn’t even dream at all. 

Caleb goes to a few more classes. He does one or two pieces of homework. He walks near the river and even looks out at the water. He signs what his lawyers keep telling him will be the last of the documents. 

They don’t go out together or anything, or kiss in public, but sometimes they’ll walk next to each other, smile in the dining hall. 

Caleb deletes every voice message without listening to any of them, and then calls his mother. She listens to him when he tells her he’s gay, and they both pretend she hadn’t been there, hadn’t sat stoned-faced while Caleb’s father screamed obsenities at him, every time Caleb got caught. 

  
  


“Where were you?” Caleb asks as Luke climbs back into bed. 

“Class,” Luke mumbles, falling face first into the pillow. 

Caleb is pretty sure it’s not even light outside yet. “At this time of night?”

“You ever even been to class, Mandrake?” Luke asks, one eye open, the other in the pillow, grinning that lopsided grin. 

“I’ve  _ got _ more class that you’ll ever have,” Caleb mumbles. “Dick.”

As he’s falling back asleep he realizes that’s the first time Luke’s called him by his last name in weeks. 

And he’s asleep before he can realize that Luke didn’t answer the question at all. 

  
  


It’s almost the end of the semester. Technically Caleb is failing, but not badly enough that the usual strings can’t be pulled. Caleb hasn’t been out to the island since that day, and he would have happily died never going back there. But Luke had insisted, rosy light hitting those high cheekbones. Luke rowed them all the way across the water. 

Caleb is jittery and restless, keeps kicking Luke as he rows, dipping his fingers into the water and snatching them back. Luke is smiling, that secretly smug smile that still makes Caleb want to punch him. 

The castle looks the same. Luke, thank God, rows them past it, pulls the boat onto the bank on the other side of the river. They can’t see campus from here, just the silhouette of that stupid castle blocking out some of the golden light of sunset. Luke keeps checking his watch.

“Why are we here,” Caleb snaps, shifting his weight from foot to foot. The air is warm, the days getting longer. 

Luke’s frowning. “They’re late,” he says. “I specifically - fucking Ames - “ and then he’s cut off because the castle explodes.

It’s a huge noise. There’s a great boom of an explosion as an orange fireball shoots up into the hazy sky. There is smoke billowing out from the left side, where the tower had been moments ago. Grey black clouds waft and expand, blocking what had been washed pink in the sunset sky. 

Caleb is still gaping at where the fireball had been, afterimages burning his eyes, when there’s another low thump, then silence. A bird twitters. Suddenly the air splits with a loud crack, something erupts in a dark plume from where the walls of the castle were, and then gravel is raining down from the sky. Caleb’s hair is sticking on end, and when he runs his hand through it, his fingers come back covered in ash and bits of paper. 

Most of the castle is gone now, and what’s left is on fire, crackling merrily enough they can hear it from where they stand. 

Luke grabs his hand, tugs him closer. Caleb turns to gape at him and Luke kisses him, sweet and deep, as they stand outside in the sun. 

Caleb tenses, and Luke’s hand is on his chin.

“It’s over,” Luke says. “The Skulls, all of them. Your dad, and everyone he knew.”

“It's ...?” Caleb asks. 

“That’s where I’ve been,” Luke says. “What I’ve been doing. Arrested, dead, disbarred. Everyone. All that was left was this building and now...” he gestures at the rubble. 

Caleb swivels his head back and forth, from the flames to Luke’s face and back again. 

“You don’t have to hide anymore,” Luke says.

Caleb lunges in to kiss him, keeps his eyes wide open, watches the flames. A plume of orange yellow flares up into the sky behind Luke’s head, then burns itself out. 

Caleb pulls back, looks at Luke’s eyes, chocolate brown in the sunset. “Who says I want to be seen with your dumb ass anyway?” Caleb asks. Luke laughs and reels him back in, and Caleb closes his eyes. 


End file.
